


camera obscura

by ravencallsign (droneheads)



Category: The Inheritance Cycle - Christopher Paolini
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Multi, Overuse of Metaphor, Overuse of repetition, but you know what? good for me, i simply must write fic for a fantasy series i reread in a fit of nostalgia, i simply refuse to write fic for my current hyperfixation, loses my mind whatever, mostly because im shit at formatting and wrote this in one sitting, ok now that we have those out of the way. i don't know why i wrote this, this is barely readable, uh. - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28548279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/droneheads/pseuds/ravencallsign
Summary: this is the thing about stories: it depends on the truth of the telling.(or, brom and morzan, brom and selena, brom and eragon, eragon and murtagh. it all comes back round in the end).
Relationships: Brom (Inheritance Cycle) & Eragon Shadeslayer, Brom/Morzan, Brom/Selena, Murtagh Morzansson & Eragon Shadeslayer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	camera obscura

**Author's Note:**

> -i will not be taking questions at this time etc. 
> 
> -anyways i wrote this in a fit of nostalgia after re-reading the series which as it turns out is incredibly heavy on the infodumping which passes through my brain like water so i literally do not remember anything so if i get anything wrong that is why. i wrote this instead of working on my senior thesis so *gestures helplessly* enjoy i guess

Oromis knows that Eragon is Brom's son before he sees the boy in the flesh, steps into his fever-addled mind and feels that familiar stubborn itch of it, and he has to shove down the thing that wells in the pit at the bottom of his ribs (and in the back of his mind Glaedr rumbles like a storm, rasps _steady_ ). 

And in the flesh he is even more so, the way his brow furrows together, the way he twitches the second before the strike, and in anyone else it's an unforgivable tell but in Eragon it is the burning afterimage of his father. 

(And Oromis does not consider himself the sentimental type but he cannot bring himself to burn it out of the boy.) 

_Foolish_ , Glaedr rebukes, in the back of his mind, _foolish_ , Oromis says to himself, sleepless, waiting, still, glances up at Naegling, glowing gold-bronze-white-silver in the moonlight, knows that his story does not stutter-stop here, that it must end with blade in his hand, blood in his mouth, and that a war is no time to coddle boys who must grow ever-faster into men. 

_But he has nothing_ , Oromis thinks, and he does not see Eragon when he does, but another boy, brown-haired, dark-eyed, knocking on doorframes, throwing pinches of salt, another boy, blue-fire-blazing, lip caught between teeth, bitter, undue. 

This is what Oromis tells Eragon of Brom: 

_wise._

_brave._

_noble._

_strong._

This is what Oromis does not say: 

_mortal._

_ungraceful._

_undue._

_young._

_young._

_young._

_young._

This is what Oromis says. Sometimes a boy with nothing grows into a man with nothing and you have to make him a legend in the process. Sometimes you do what you must. 

Oromis knows that Eragon is Brom's son before he meets him in the flesh, that is the thing. It is like a flash of light in a dark room, in one place and out the other- the picture created still wet and wailing and embryonic- the picture, the legend, the story, the boy, twitchy and wide-eyed and waiting to be formed. 

_Foolish_ , Oromis thinks to himself, because he needs to be making the boy into everything, because the boy must be everything, because there is no time for him to be nothing, is the thing. 

_He has nothing_ , Oromis thinks to himself, and pretends not to notice the twitch before he strikes. 

-

Brom is not the stuff of legend. Brom is born (unknowingly, then) at the very tail-end of the Riders' reign, when the land has not exactly grown _complacent_ (because Alagaesia is forevermore uneasy in her bones, and as such revolt and revolution are easy enough to foment) but it has grown _into_ , settled into the fluting malachite towers that rise higher than every cathedral in every city, into the dwarven cities burrowing into her spine.

Complacency feels a lot like settling. Only one of them numbs your mouth enough. 

Brom is thirteen when his dragon hatches for him, and with her comes the rest of his life. Saphira is more blue than he has ever seen, in his sleepy backwater village, the deep lapis of an ocean he has yet to see, shimmering periwinkle-cornflower-dusk-into-night, and she nudges his disbelieving hand with a delicate nose and with it comes the rest of his life. 

Brom is thirteen, and he is a Rider. 

Brom is thirteen, and he meets Morzan.

Morzan is the stuff of legend. Morzan is sharp-edged and sharp-bladed and he has black hair and startlingly blue eyes like the snap-crackle of lightning before it strikes. Morzan smiles like he knows exactly how every battle is going to end. 

This is what Oromis tells Eragon of Brom and Morzan:

_devotion._

_friendship._

_betrayal._

This is what Oromis does not tell him: 

_hunger._

_love._

They are the same thing, if you look closely enough and also not at all.

Legends into legends into legends. Brom used to think that Morzan's dragon was as ruddy as a sunset, dusk into dawn. 

(Much later, it is only ever the color of blood.)

Morzan is very beautiful. Morzan is beautiful the way a snake is before it strikes. Morzan is beautiful the way the lightning is before it blinds you, leaves you senseless. 

Morzan is very beautiful. It is very easy to fall in love with him. It is very easy to be trapped in his wake, in the grasping reaches of the whirlpool that he is, wild thing, violent, but in the storm the salt-spray tastes almost like blood and if Brom closes his eyes, feels the lash of it against his skin it is like the synonym of a caress and he does not have to think about what happens to a doomed ship in a storm. 

Morzan is very beautiful. He is still beautiful when the heels of his boots track runny black-red blood through the streets of Doru Araeba. He is still beautiful when Zar'roc, keen and crimson and straining to live up to the cage of its namesake, sheens red and wet and so do his hands in equal measure, misery spreading, surging, creeping. 

Brom made a fairth of Selena, once, because he loved her and lost her and Eragon looks at his mother and thinks that he has her nose but he has Brom's eyes. 

(Brom made a fairth of Morzan, once, because he loved him and lost him, but that does not fit so well into the story, does it?) 

-

Here is what Oromis tells Eragon of Selena: 

_clever._

_beautiful._

_skilled._

Here is what Oromis does not tell him: 

_ravenous._

_similar._

(Are you getting it now?) 

In Teirm, the herbalist-witch Angela had told Eragon that she told only true fortunes- and she was not lying, because fortunes are just penny-prophecies, and prophecies are just fortunes made manifest- but the thing is, about the truth, is that it is so much more than the yellow-white-black facets of a dragon’s knucklebones. 

Here is the truth, or some of it, or not at all: Selena falls in love with Brom because she has no choice. She falls in love with him because she has all the choice in the world. She falls in love with him because he has whirlpool-eyes and dark circles beneath them and he fights like the land does not care for him. 

(She fights the same way. it is less and less of an irony as time goes by.) 

Brom is not beautiful, not in the way that Morzan is. He does not have lightning-strike eyes and dark hair and a grin like a blade. Brom is furtive-skinny, war-starved, and his hands never truly stop shaking, and sometimes when he looks at her she knows that he is seeing someone else. 

She knows who he is seeing, in the back of her mind, because sometimes she closes her eyes and feels the salt-wet spray coating the inside of her mouth. Because when she kisses him she tastes it too, like guilt, like the guttering of a flame. 

Here is the truth: Brom falls in love with Selena because he thinks that she is his redemption and then he falls in love with her because she is anything but. He falls in love with her because Morzan was a sword, unsubtle and edged and worn bare, and Selena is a dagger, slipped in between his ribs. 

(He has always played with blades far too freely.) 

Here is the truth. Sometimes they lie tangled up in one another, some stolen moment in some nondescript town that they’d had to arrange under the noses of damn-near-everyone, and Brom’s eyes are whirlpool-dark and colorless and Selena's are much the same. 

This is what Oromis told Eragon: 

_they loved each other very much._

This is what he did not tell him: 

_it was penance._

-

Brom’s son hatches a dragon when he is fifteen and he knows about it the instant it happens, knows that the rest of the boy’s life comes with it and when Eragon comes knocking at his door the next morning, _gedwey ignesia_ shining from his palm like nothing before or since, something in the bottom of his chest hurts so much he almost doubles over with it. 

(Brom is too old for hoping, but the claws around his heart shift, just a little.) 

Eragon has his mother’s nose and his father’s hands but the way he smiles, crooked and bright, is all his own. It is not a whirlpool-smile, not a dagger-smile. it is the smile of a fifteen-year-old boy much too young for the thing that he is. Brom grips his staff until his fingers turn white and bloodless around the gnarled wood and thinks about other boys and the same wars. 

_is this absolution? is it penance?_

He fucks up in Yazuac, almost gets them both killed, and when Eragon tells him what happened he almost thinks that that would’ve been the better option. (In his mind’s eye, here, is a boy, face streaked with dirt and blood, sword blazing up with sapphire flame. In his mind’s eye, here, is a boy staring at him, solemn, guilty, black blood dripping from his hands.) 

_is it absolution? is it penance?_

Eragon is fifteen years old and the weight of the world seems to curl up and sit on his shoulders sometimes and Brom grips his staff ever-tighter, longs to cut away the world, other boys but the same goddamn wars, because he is fifteen years old and the rest of his life can’t come like this- 

The world is kinder to wars than they are to the boys that have to wage them. 

Brom thinks, very dimly, that Morzan’s son is so very dangerously much like him. 

(Brom thinks, very dimly, from very far away, about two other boys-into-men, about how Morzan’s smile had been more of a baring of teeth, about how the ground had been slippery with both their blood, about how Morzan had lain there, so mortally broken, beauty slipped from his face like a mask, Zar’roc still burning bright as pain in his hand.) 

_is it absolution?_

-

Here is what Oromis thinks of Murtagh, in the few moments that he meets him for: 

_young._

Eragon is fifteen when he meets him, and so in his mind’s eye Murtagh is older- will always be older, for the rest of his life- but Murtagh is still so much a boy then, barely twenty to Eragon’s fifteen, still growing into angles and limbs and a legacy that has only left him with something to prove and the ropy scar on his back. 

(Boys and their wars. Boys and their scars.) 

The fatal mistake all of them make- Eragon, Brom, Oromis, Nasuada, Galbatorix- is assuming that Murtagh has too much of his father in him. This is incorrect. He has too much of his mother, then, and that makes him infinitely more dangerous, because Morzan, for all that he is, is spectacle, not subterfuge, roguish, not refined. Morzan was a sword. Selena was a dagger. There is a difference. 

Murtagh takes his father’s sword on that battlefield, red as the dusk-into-dawn, red as blood, there is no difference, and it is like the blade sings to be in his hand, a lightning strike crackling down into the whole of him, _my inheritance, my father, mine, mine, mine._

The fatal mistake all of them made was assuming Murtagh had something. 

(Eragon has had nothing, of course, but the hole in his heart, the thing caging it, has been there, never a friend but always a witness, since the day he was born. Murtagh had it cut out of him, keen as pain. There is a difference.) 

Back in Uru’baen, Galbatorix smiles, and welcomes his right hand back home. If he does not fit quite right, well- he will in time. 

(Murtagh’s eyes are not lightning strikes. Murtagh’s smile does not know the end of battles.) 

They clash, red against blue, legends into legends into legends. Eragon's hands shake and shake and won’t stop shaking. Murtagh wakes up screaming in marble rooms, muttering the names of people who are long dead or never existed at all. 

(The fatal mistake: it is not fathers who make their sons.) 

_I am so proud of you, my son,_ Brom says. 

_My legacy lives on in you,_ Morzan says. 

Two truths and a lie.

(Are you getting it now?) 

Sometimes Murtagh angles Zar'roc just a hair to the left, slashes Eragon's arm instead of paring to the bone. sometimes Eragon words a spell just a little too loosely, lets go of the magic just a little too soon. Sometimes, sometimes. They are boys from nothing, clawing towards something. 

The world is always kinder to wars than the boys who have to wage them. 

-  
  


Here is a thing that could happen: 

“I’m so, so sorry,” Murtagh gasps, and here, eyes hollow, Zar’roc less a sword and more a growth clinging to Murtagh’s hand, he looks more like his mother than he ever has. “I couldn’t- I couldn’t- I couldn’t-” 

Eragon clasps his brother’s hand, slings his arm around his shoulders, leans into the other man’s taller frame. 

“Murtagh,” he says, like a disbelief, like a prayer, clutches the other man to him like he’s half-convinced he’ll disappear into thin air, like this is one of Galbatorix's increasingly cruel torments. “Brother, brother, brother-” 

Here is a thing that does happen: 

Eragon stands in front of the gold-gilt doors of the throne room. 

“Dance for me,” Galbatorix says, shadowy and indistinct on his distant throne. 

The floor is slick with blood. 

-

Killing Galbatorix is not a joy, however much bards across the land will proclaim it as such thereafter. 

(The thing about being nothing turned into something turned into a legend turned into a kingkiller: You will wake up for years after, spells dying on your lips, sword in your hand, already slashing forward. 

The thing about being a kingkiller: you still sleep in your boots, one hand on your sword, even in the outer wilds where nobody roams. 

The thing about being a kingkiller: old habits die hard.) 

Murtagh looks at his brother in the days after (the word still forms strangely in his mouth: brother. _brother. I have a brother.)_

They are two boys, nothing crawling towards something. 

“We’re going away for a while,” Murtagh says. 

Eragon looks panicked, so much still that fifteen-year-old boy racing against a river to save an elf- Murtagh half-smiles at the memory, because it was so obvious in retrospect- who else could have killed a king? Who else could have raised a revolution? 

“Why?” Eragon says, catches his arm almost petulantly, almost a picture-perfect imitation of a younger brother. “Brother,” he says, stumbling over the word. “Murtagh. stay. Help us build this new world, please.” 

(For a moment, Murtagh lets his mind imagine it, a life walking the city streets without that tell-tale shadow prickling at the nape of his neck. A life sitting at trade negotiations and troop negotiations and sneaking off to roam the city or fly on Thorn when he got bored. A life sparring with Eragon every three days, perhaps, and drinking with Nasuada in one of the fluting elven towers as the evening bled into night. 

Two boys, nothing clawed into something.) 

“I can’t,” Murtagh says, and he does not know it but in that moment he is closer to his father than he has ever been, and ever will be. 

( _I can’t,_ Murtagh says, because Eragon is a boy into a man into a legend into a kingkiller and he is so much at once now that he almost hurts to look at. _I can’t,_ Murtagh says, because he is a kingkiller of a different sort and Morzan’s son and no matter how many things Eragon claws into dust for him blood remembers best. 

_I can’t,_ because the thing that he needs to become is too new, too unwieldy, too unformed and embryonic for four walls and too many people and people who love him.) 

Above Illirea, a red dragon circles twice, and finds its way back home. 

**Author's Note:**

> -this was supposed to be a character study and halfway through it turned into the Stan Murtagh fic. anyways stan murtagh king of having a tragic backstory and also being the gay brother 
> 
> -like phoebe bridgers said in her seminal album stranger in the alps i literally have emotional motion sickness 
> 
> -my personal headcanon re-reading the books is that what happened to eragon during the blood-oath celebration did not erase his scar nor did it totally cure him of his chronic pain (ie. it's still painful sometimes he just doesn't get full-blown fits) because the actual canon scene is uh. a very weird reading if you think of it through the lens of chronic pain and disability! 
> 
> -anyways i am going to sleep


End file.
